Hinata felt the fear of falling hit before she actually fell. She threw her hands out to catch herself and waited for the floor, but she stopped short with a thin stream of sand that wrapped around her ribs and shoulders before she even got close to the ground. She breathed out as she was held there for a moment before she was lifted back onto her feet.

… How did he…? Could he feel everything she did through the sand that encapsulated the walls and floors? They were filled with chakra… why didn't she think that he would be able to feel everything?

Hinata felt her face burn with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. Why did no one tell her!? She had been walking in circles around the house aimlessly. It made sense now. How had Gaara thought to put furniture into the empty room unless he knew she explored? How would he know how thick to make the walls if he didn't feel them?

Hinata looked back at the tray she was preparing for lunch and weighed her options. Maybe he simply didn't know that they didn't tell her… that was the most charitable she could be in this situation. Otherwise…

Hinata grabbed what she intended to when she tripped, sliding her hand over the counter as she came back to it. The stone was one of the few things in the house that wasn't made of sand other than the fixtures and the furniture that hadn't appeared in the empty rooms. She tapped her hand on the side of the tray and put the ingredient down by the tray as her chest burned. It was the most intense feeling that she had in a while, and it reminded her how stupid she felt sitting on the floor outside his door, practically begging for a scrap of attention from a man that asked for her to be there in the first place.

Hinata snagged up his tray and took it to the Gaara's door, feeling it freeze up with her pace like it might close to protect itself. Now she knew she wasn't imagining it. The door was really reacting to her. She slid the tray in the door and paused there for a moment as she built up the courage to say what was on her heart. "Maybe this feels less lonely for you because you know what's happening on the other side of the door."

Hinata felt her eyes burn with her own admission of how alone she felt in this house. It was the first time she said it out loud because who else was she going to say it to?

Before Hinata could start to cry there in front of the door, she returned to get her own meal and sit at the table even though she had a voice nagging her that distancing herself from him wasn't going to make her feel any less like she was living in an empty house.

Now she just knew that she was only one.

Meal trays came, but Hinata stopped sitting with him. She stopped exploring, no matter what he put out new. She spent more time on her bed, where she knew he couldn't see.

'You've offended her.' Shukaku mocked as disinterested as he could make himself sound, but Gaara knew that he was just as desperate to understand. He could feel the irritation Shukaku felt that they had gone backward.

"I didn't do anything." Gaara leaned his head back on the wall, wishing she was on the other side.

'She wants you to go to her.' Shukaku prodded impatiently. Or maybe Hinata wanted to be left alone like his sister did when she was upset. 'She said she was lonely. She wants you to do something about it.'

Gaara peeked his head out the door and down the hall, knowing that she wasn't in it, but it still made his heart rate shoot up.

Hinata jumped at a knock on her door. Did he come to her?

Hinata got off her bed, putting her hand on the knob, and felt resistance. Gaara was afraid she would open it. She instead shrank down to sit beside the door and waited for the door to unlatch and open with a smaller space than he opened his own door.

She could hear him sit down on the other side of the wall, mirroring their setup at his door. On paper, this seemed like nothing, but it actually made her feel like they were getting somewhere. Like he was finally admitting that he wanted to interact with her.

"Why…" Gaara's voice was softer than Hinata thought it would be. She didn't know why she imagined his voice to be deeper and harsher. The growling that shook the walls was probably not his voice, but it was all she had to go off of. "Why did your father send you here?"

That was his first question? "You asked for me to come."

"Why would someone honor the request of a monster without question?" Gaara asked.

Hinata felt the implication in her soul. Her father didn't even ask for a different option. He gave her up willingly. He saw an opportunity to get rid of her and jumped on it. "My father doesn't think much of me."

Gaara's silence worried her for a moment. Maybe he would think that he thought he got the short end of the stick in this deal now that he knew that she wasn't valuable. "My father didn't either."

Hinata covered her mouth as her heart sank to her stomach. She didn't know much about his father, but she could feel the pain that came with that statement. Unfortunately, the one thing she did know was that before he was exiled as a small child, Gaara killed two people. His uncle and his father. She had never asked for an explanation, and she certainly wasn't going to ask now.

Gaara was a young child with a demon in his ear at the time. Hinata wasn't sure if she could hold a crime like that against him now.

"You stopped watering your plant." Gaara continued past his painful past.

"It died." Hinata looked at the shriveled plant sitting sadly in its pot. "It was never really going to be happy in this climate."

"Do you… like plants?" Gaara asked with hesitation.

"I grew up in a forest. It's…" How could she say it without making it sound like she was just homesick? "I'm used to my whole world being green." Well, that wasn't well worded.

"Would you like more plants?" Gaara continued.

Hinata laid her head back. "Not if I just have to watch them die."

Gaara became quiet for a moment before Hinata heard him get up and leave without saying goodbye. Did she upset him?

Hinata brought a tray to Gaara's room, finding a note sitting just shy of the door. Was he only planning to speak to her at her door? She slid his tray in and picked up the notes. It was a crudely made map of the house pointing her to the back door.

Hinata had never opened the back door because, as far as she knew, there was only one thing back there, the same thing that was out the front door. Sand as far as the eye could see. She held the note to her chest as she looked at his open door feeling the anxiety coming off it as it waited to see what she would do. She shouldn't make him wait until after she ate, right?

Hinata padded past the kitchen and the not-so-empty rooms that seemed to change daily now and to the door that she always dismissed because if she wasn't to be outside, she could go to the courtyard and be shielded from the wind.

The door opened for her impatiently and opened to… not a hill of sand.

Hinata stepped into a room with a glass ceiling filled to the rafters with tiny potted succulents. Each in their own little sand pot, they were in all different stages of growth. Gaara had to have been coming out here and caring for them because some of them were newly propagated with only a few buds in a little pot.

Did he grow all of these? Was that what he had been doing all these years? It was a whole forest of cactus and other desert flora.

It wasn't the oak and pine trees of her home, but she didn't realize how much she missed the green plant life until she found herself crying. Hinata quickly wiped her face and crouched down to one of the new growths.

"You're upset." Gaara's voice startled her from the hall.

Hinata sniffed. "No, sorry."

"You're crying." Gaara pushed, concerned.

"I'm fine. I just didn't realize how much I missed plants." She was even happy to just smell fresh dirt even though it didn't smell like home.

Gaara took a moment to reply. "You are welcome here anytime you want."

"Why didn't Temari-chan or Kankuro-san tell me this was here?" Hinata wondered, tilting her head toward the door.

"They are not welcome in here." Then… why was she?

"Thank you." Hinata bowed her head toward the door even though he couldn't see the formality.

Gaara left the hall without another word.